Profession feedback

[Vibe]

A thread to share your opinions about different professions, to give a general overview on the classes, their gameplay, their pros and cons.

Most of my testing were done with low levels in sPvP (I did not dive into traits).


Guardian
Very good support and fantastic utility skills but that's about it. The damage is subpar compared to other classes, it's just really low even with 2 hander options. There is no viable ranged option, the scepter is pretty much the only ranged weapon and it is quite bad.
Survivability is quite low for a heavy armor profession. Elite skills are also nothing special.
I was pretty disappointed with the Guardian to be honest. I guess it's perfectly suited for those who like to play pure support (or even a healer), but that's about it. One thing I also noticed is that in sPvP I had about 15k HP on my Guardian which is incredibly low if you compare to Thief (17k), Hunter (22k) and Warrior (24k).

Ranger
Good ranged AND melee damage. Didn't feel like it had that much utility, but the damage was pretty fucking awesome. Mostly done Longbow/Greatsword - I can see how amazing Longbow can be for WvW sieges with its 1500 (!) range attacks (afaik the longest attack range of any profession). Greatsword is more than viable for melee, has a gap closer and a stun if you're behind the target. The pet is ok too, adds a nice dps to it and the bear can tank quite well.
Imo great for both PvP (specially WvW) and PvE. I can see this profession as the king of sieges (my old friendcher).
Not to mention that all the sPvP matches that I've done had atleast 5 rangers in the team.
As for personal opinion, it was less fun to play compared to Warrior or Thief.

Warrior
Great sustained melee damage, good survivability. 2h hammer has less damage but good utility and aoe, 2h sword is single damage with a nice aoe skill and a gap closer. The biggest 2h sword damage dealer locks you in place so it's not perfect for PvP. Mace + Shield have a butt of stuns and interrupts, I see this as the tanking weapon setup.
Still didn't feel like it had enough survivability as a heavy armor profession but atleast this class has some extra survivability skills (5 second immune skill, ..) and a nice health pool of 24,000.
For WvW it's not bad as well with the rifle option, which has most attacks at 1200 range and that is pretty sufficient for WvW sieges. The rifle isn't half bad damage too.

Thief
Good burst damage, medium survivability. It was fun to play. Thief damage is sufficient and you have a load of skills to save your ass and run away (stealth, teleporting bow shot, blind skills). Imo thief damage is more bursty than other classes since you don't have cooldown on abilities but instead you use a resource called Initiative. Once you waste all your initiative you're stuck with ability 1 auto attack until it recharges back up. I usually used this gap to run or kite.
Some melee skills felt clunky and didn't trigger right when pressed.
Cons are mostly bad AoE damage and not the best range. There's no good AoE skill that you can "spam" and it makes thieves more of a 1v1 class if you ask me. As for range you have a Shortbow that is mostly 900 range skills, so it's not the best for WvW but I guess good enough. The Shortbow teleport skill is fun tho

If I take all 4 in consideration, the most "effective" profession was the Warrior.

[Thovex]

A thread to share your opinions about different professions, to give a general overview on the classes, their gameplay, their pros and cons.

Most of my testing were done with low levels in sPvP (I did not dive into traits).


Guardian
Very good support and fantastic utility skills but that's about it. The damage is subpar compared to other classes, it's just really low even with 2 hander options. There is no viable ranged option, the scepter is pretty much the only ranged weapon and it is quite bad.
Survivability is quite low for a heavy armor profession. Elite skills are also nothing special.
I was pretty disappointed with the Guardian to be honest. I guess it's perfectly suited for those who like to play pure support (or even a healer), but that's about it. One thing I also noticed is that in sPvP I had about 15k HP on my Guardian which is incredibly low if you compare to Thief (17k), Hunter (22k) and Warrior (24k).

Ranger
Good ranged AND melee damage. Didn't feel like it had that much utility, but the damage was pretty fucking awesome. Mostly done Longbow/Greatsword - I can see how amazing Longbow can be for WvW sieges with its 1500 (!) range attacks (afaik the longest attack range of any profession). Greatsword is more than viable for melee, has a gap closer and a stun if you're behind the target. The pet is ok too, adds a nice dps to it and the bear can tank quite well.
Imo great for both PvP (specially WvW) and PvE. I can see this profession as the king of sieges (friendly archer).
Not to mention that all the sPvP matches that I've done had atleast 5 rangers in the team.
As for personal opinion, it was less fun to play compared to Warrior or Thief.

Warrior
Great sustained melee damage, good survivability. 2h hammer has less damage but good utility and aoe, 2h sword is single damage with a nice aoe skill and a gap closer. The biggest 2h sword damage dealer locks you in place so it's not perfect for PvP. Mace + Shield have a butt of stuns and interrupts, I see this as the tanking weapon setup.
Still didn't feel like it had enough survivability as a heavy armor profession but atleast this class has some extra survivability skills (5 second immune skill, ..) and a nice health pool of 24,000.
For WvW it's not bad as well with the rifle option, which has most attacks at 1200 range and that is pretty sufficient for WvW sieges. The rifle isn't half bad damage too.

Thief
Good burst damage, medium survivability. It was fun to play. Thief damage is sufficient and you have a load of skills to save your ass and run away (stealth, teleporting bow shot, blind skills). Imo thief damage is more bursty than other classes since you don't have cooldown on abilities but instead you use a resource called Initiative. Once you waste all your initiative you're stuck with ability 1 auto attack until it recharges back up. I usually used this gap to run or kite.
Some melee skills felt clunky and didn't trigger right when pressed.
Cons are mostly bad AoE damage and not the best range. There's no good AoE skill that you can "spam" and it makes thieves more of a 1v1 class if you ask me. As for range you have a Shortbow that is mostly 900 range skills, so it's not the best for WvW but I guess good enough. The Shortbow teleport skill is fun tho

If I take all 4 in consideration, the most "effective" profession was the Warrior.

Necromancer
Excellent AoE skills especially great for catching players in WvW. You can "haunt" enemies back into your zerg, freeze them and poison them with hundreds of conditions with tons of damages per second, the double daggers are pretty good for life draining quickly, the scepter however is not that great. You can constantly stay alive during a retreat because I have 24,000 health with that another "Death shroud" ability where I turn into a demon with another 30,000 hp and you can just survive a very long retreat with this.

The minions that you can summon are pretty useless.

Elementalist
Fun to play, lots of skills (20 per weapon) with all kind of damages you can do, AoE damages, single target damages, conditions and healing skills. There are a couple of ridiculously overpowered skills for a WvW siege, for example you can throw down a ice-spike, fire-volcano and some kind of rock mine that inflicts massive bleeding over 12 seconds (80 damage every second, in AoE.) and the initial attacks hits for 4800 damage. Put all three of those on one spot and you got several downed enemies on the walls.

What I dislike is that the healing skills are clearly useless, no way I'm going to use them unless I need some serious healing done fast. - The utility skills to spawn weapons are also weak because the weapons are severely underpowered.

[Overdriven]

Necromancer
The minions that you can summon are pretty useless.

Clearly not using them right 
The minions basically work as a distraction whilst you rip into enemies with your attacks. I've been using the axe + warhorn and you can really do a lot of damage with the mixture of area attack of Unholy Feast whilst tearing into them with Ghastly Claws and if you get into any trouble you can run away using Locust Swarm. The blood fiend recharges fast enough that if it dies it doesn't really matter and it provides a very steady income of health. Mind you, this is all for PvE. I haven't tried the minions in PvP areas.

Some of the signets are pretty nice as well.

The only trouble I'm having as necro is deciding on a solid set of second weapons. I've tried the daggers, but I already have the axe for relative close quarters. The scepter was ok but not great and I don't like the marks that come with the staff.

[Kay of Sauvage]

Regarding those minions, I bet there's some trait line skills and bonuses that you can specialize in to make the minions very effective. That's how it looks with the mesmer's illusions, though probably to a lesser extent.


Mesmer
I've only played a mesmer so far, so I don't have anything to compare it to. My build is tailored to WvW. I'd say the mesmer's strong point is applying conditions (and boons) to debuff an enemy and deal indirect damage that way. For example, the mesmer has a lot of ways to put vulnerability (lowers armor) and confusion (damages opponent for each skill they use), and can put retaliation on allies (damages foes each time they attack the ally). The trait attributes can boost the duration and damage of the conditions, and there's trait skills that boost them further or cause additional bonus conditions to be applied when you do something else.

You can have up to 3 illusions alive at once. The illusions target only 1 opponent (whoever you have selected when you create the illusion). If the target dies, the illusions associated with that target just disappear harmlessly. You always have 4 special shatter options that, when used, will cause your illusions to be destroyed and cause some effect. The choices are basically extra damage, confusion, interrupt+daze, or distortion for yourself (you evade all attacks).

I think by far, the best mesmer weapon is the staff. The main attack applies bounces off an enemy to either another enemy or an ally, and grants a random condition or boon on each bounce, respectively. Then you've got 2 instant illusion-creating skills, so you can use these first. You also have a personal chaos armor skill that'll apply conditions to foes and boons to you whenever you are attacked. And last is the chaos storm AOE, which will apply random boons to allies and conditions to foes. Not much to dislike here.

I think the best alternate weapon set is the main-hand sword and either the focus or torch in the off-hand. The sword is the mesmer's only melee weapon (besides the aquatic spear weapon). I think the 3-combo primary attack it has is most useful for debuffing a target rather than dealing damage, because the first 2 attacks apply 5 second vulnerability, and 3rd removes a boon from the enemy. The next skill is a flurry of rapid attacks, but most importantly here is that you'll have 2 seconds of distortion, which meaning you'll evade attacks for 2 seconds. The 3rd skill creates an illusion that leaps forward and cripples your target. You can then press the skill again and you'll instantly swap with the illusion and that'll immobilize the foe for 2 seconds.

Using this sword with the focus, you also get a wall of energy skill that grants swiftness to allies that cross it, and cripple to foes. That makes this set quite effective for chasing down foes. The other skill here creates an illusion that creates a defensive bubble that protects itself and allies from projectiles. With the torch off-hand instead, you get a skill that causes you to go invisible and blind those around you, and then reappear 3 seconds later, burning those around you. So you can imagine why this might go well with the melee main weapon. The other skill for the torch is an illusion that puts out confusion and retaliation.

As for the other personal skills, I'm using a charr-specific skill that tosses out a landmine that cripples and bleeds the foes that trip it (yes, even more help in chasing down enemies or escaping). I've also got a skill the revives downed allies in an area instantly, and allows them to be fully revived if they then achieve a kill. And my final skill is another charr-specific skill, a battle roar that gives fury and might to nearby allies.

[Digglez]

Survivability is quite low for a heavy armor profession

Dont know what game you are playing but my Guardian was neigh immortal in sPvP.  It literally took ENTIRE teams to kill me.  I could hold points indefinitely against 2-3 enemies.  Sure damage sucks with a Survivability build.  Guardian can do GREAT damage in pve, just not pvp really without a very offensive minded spec.

[Vibe]

Dont know what game you are playing but my Guardian was neigh immortal in sPvP.  It literally took ENTIRE teams to kill me.  I could hold points indefinitely against 2-3 enemies.  Sure damage sucks with a Survivability build.  Guardian can do GREAT damage in pve, just not pvp really without a very offensive minded spec.

Yeah like I said, I didn't even look at traits to be honest. The build you get by default leaves you with about 15k hp and not that much survivability.

[Ujin]

you're wrong about the guardian damage actually. Properly specced , he can do some decent spike damage with 1h sword or with the gs. And even if not specced into offense, he can still do nice consistent damage (not spikes).

[robert_namo]

I only played the thief character 90% pve 10% pvp. What drew me in was the steal skill which I thought was a pickpocket skill but it's actually a one time skill steal and it's fun seeing what you managed to steal but with fast paced action you don't have time to check the skill, just use it. My favorite skill was the teleport shot, I used it to get out range of mobs as well as pvp and it never fails, also useful when you just use it to travel. I liked switching between dual daggers and a bow

Pve:

Dual Daggers: skill 5 which is some kind of sneak attack + stun skill comboed with skill 1 does a massive amount of damage, only ones worth using IMO, sometimes I can kill a mob after it gets one hit on me.


Bow: if you target one mob/ player and there is another one close enough, you get a ricochet arrow that I think can target up to 3 targets and if it only hits 2, then the targeted one gets hit twice, that combined with skill 3 which is an evade+ cripple skill, you can kill all melee and some ranged without getting hit because you get your points back faster than they can chase you down.



Summary: this class can be deadly but easily damaged from what I noticed from my play time though I only managed to get to only lvl 15. IMO this class is more of a support class as well as a very good pve class it sucks when you get outumbered and can't escape but with like 1000 stealth skills it's rare not to get away, just don't get into melee and stay there too long.

[SeQuel]

Thief

I liked thief a fair bit, I'm an Assassin kind of guy so I tried this profession first. PvE the thief was ok, he wasn't the best but he wasn't awful. I was sitll able to PvE fine with my damage. I had quite a few utility skills and if ever in trouble I was able to go invisible and loose aggro if I was about to die. PvP is where I thought Thief would shine but I was kind of disappointed. The Thief as of last BWE was forced to run a back stab build that from what I heard was OP and could crit for 16k but if you didn't run that build every build was far less superior and kinda rendered useless. The problem with this build is that it was set assuming you were level 80 so it only worked in sPvP which I played very little (more of a WvWvW kind of guy) so I felt kind of hindered. Overall experience I enjoyed the Thief, an obvious downside is I was squishy but did good damage.

Necomancer

I don't want to really judge this class too much as I only got it to level 8 but I couldn't bring myself to level any more. I found the skills to be extremely dull and boring and didn't enjoy Necromancer much. The Staff skills were all skills that requires you to essentially put traps on the ground which required the enemy to walk over them, kinda got bored of this and didn't like it at all so I tried the Sceptre and Warhorn. I didn't really like the Sceptre and Warhorn combo either you kinda spammed conditions on people and used a few other boring skills.

Don't really take this feedback to heart....you might like Necro I just found their skills to be extremely boring.

Necromancer

The minions that you can summon are pretty useless.

I felt the same way.

[Miley]

Guild Wars 1 was much better with professions and diversity.

[Digglez]

Guild Wars 1 was much better with professions and diversity.

and by diversity you mean classes having overlapping redundant abilities...yes, very diverse.  not using over 3/4 of the stuff in your spell book...very diverse

[SeQuel]

and by diversity you mean classes having overlapping redundant abilities...yes, very diverse.  not using over 3/4 of the stuff in your spell book...very diverse

This^ Over 3 quarters of the skills in Guild Wars were shit and you had builds that were all the same because they used the set of skills that were better then everything else so I don't see much of a change.

[Miley]

That's your opinions. I had lots of fun making my own builds that were unique and actually having fun.

Guild Wars 2 has a limited amount of skills, and you cannot cross professions. Each profession has like the same skills but with different attributes sort of (maybe a little exaggeration). For example, every profession has a ring spell/skill or something where you get to choose where to place it if you know what I mean. And there's not a set healing class--everyone heals themselves. I definitely don't like how they made it more like those other MMORPGs.

[SeQuel]

That's your opinions. I had lots of fun making my own builds that were unique and actually having fun.

Guild Wars 2 has a limited amount of skills, and you cannot cross professions. Each profession has like the same skills but with different attributes sort of (maybe a little exaggeration). For example, every profession has a ring spell/skill or something where you get to choose where to place it if you know what I mean. And there's not a set healing class--everyone heals themselves. I definitely don't like how they made it more like those other MMORPGs.

Made it MORE like every other MMORPGS? If anything they have strafed far from it. Removing dedicated tanks and healers alone makes it stand out. I personally hated the fact that in MMO's REQUIRED a healer and tank for a dungeon/instance. Though I am a little sad they don't have healer as that's my preferred role I still enjoy that every class heal.

The skill set, quests, level progression and WvWvW and enviroment is a lot different and I like it much more then other MMO's.